The present invention generally relates to methods and equipment for reducing the size of a material.
Various types of equipment are known for slicing, dicing, shredding, granulating, comminuting, or otherwise reducing the size of materials. A widely used line of comminuting machines is commercially available from Urschel Laboratories, Inc., under the name Comitrol®, aspects of which are disclosed in patent documents including U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,660,778, 4,610,397, 4,657,190, and 5,201,469, whose contents are incorporated herein by reference. Comitrol® machines are adapted to uniformly comminute a wide variety of products at high production capacities, for example, food products including fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and meat products, as well as nonfood products including chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
A known configuration for a Comitrol® machine is depicted in an exploded view in FIG. 1. The machine is represented as comprising an impeller and cutting head assembly 10, a feed hopper 12 through which material is fed to the impeller and cutting head assembly 10, an electric motor 14 and drive belt 16 that rotates a spindle 22 on which the impeller is mounted for rotating the impeller within the cutting head, an upper enclosure 18 surrounding the assembly 10, and a lower enclosure 20 through which comminuted material drops from the assembly 10. As evident from FIG. 1, the depicted configuration is adapted to be mounted with a table that supports the motor 12. Material is delivered through the feed hopper 12 to the assembly 10 as the impeller rotates within the cutting head. The impeller includes paddles that force the material through uniformly spaced knives mounted on the cutting head parallel to the impeller axis. The spacings between the knives determined the size of the resulting comminuted product.
Various other configurations of Comitrol® machines, including their drive systems, cutting heads and impellers, are also available beyond those represented in FIG. 1. As a nonlimiting example, FIG. 2 (in which the same reference numerals used in FIG. 1 are used to denote the same or functionally equivalent elements) represents the impeller and cutting head assembly 10 as comprising a larger impeller 24 and cutting head 26 than what is shown in FIG. 1. The paddles of the impeller 24 force material through uniformly spaced separators mounted on the cutting head 26 perpendicular to the axis of the impeller 24, and then through knives mounted on the cutting head 26 parallel to the impeller axis. The spacings between the separators and between the knives determine the size of the resulting comminuted product.
While configurations of the types represented in FIGS. 1 and 2 have performed extremely well for use with a wide variety of materials and applications, machines having the capabilities of the Comitrol® and adapted for additional applications and installations are desirable.